EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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2465. How to organize a fair rogaining competition?

Invited abstract in session WA-16: Fairness in sports, stream OR in Sports.

Wednesday, 8:30-10:00
Room: 19 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. David Van Bulck
Business Informatics and Operations Management, Ghent University
2. Joonas Pääkkönen
Department of Data and Information Management, Dalarna University
3. Benjamin JACQUET
ENSTA Paris
4. Dries Goossens
Business Informatics and Operations Management, Ghent University

Abstract

Orienteering is a cross-country running sport where competitors use a map and compass to visit control points as quickly as possible. In a special variant called rogaining, each control point is assigned with a score, competitors are allowed to visit the given controls in the order of their own preference, and there is a time limit that prevents competitors from visiting all control points. Hence, it is important for the competitors to carefully plan which controls they are going to visit (like in the knapsack problem) and in which order (like in the traveling salesman problem). Thus, winning a rogaining competition not only requires physical but also planning and navigational skills.

Unlike most operations research literature, we approach the rogaining problem from an organizers’ perspective: how to assign scores fairly, balancing physical and strategic skills? In practice, this typically translates to designing rogaining competitions such that brute physical skills are not overly favored. We follow a bi-level optimization approach where the outer-layer assigns scores to control points and the inner-layer simulates a portfolio of pre-defined competitors. The result is a Pareto front of possible score assignments with distinct trade-offs between physical and strategic skills. Our method's efficacy is shown in its application to the 2023 rogaining world championships.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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